Introduction: Play—Its Purpose and Importance
lay, the cherished pastime of childhood, is more than a pleasant way to while away the hours when we are young. Play is an integral part of growth and development
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(Elkind, 2004). Play provides children with thousands of naturally occurring opportunities to stretch their minds and their bodies. Each playful moment allows children’s brains to make essential connections among their experiences, thoughts, and feelings. It adds to their general understanding of themselves and the world around them. Through play, children learn at their own pace—taking in and processing just the right amount of sensory information they can handle at that point in their development. And, “Research shows the links between play and foundational capacities such as memory, self-regulation, oral language abilities, social skills, and success in school” (Copple & Bredekamp, 2009, p. 14). This chapter will discuss and demonstrate these claims and show how to apply them in center and classroom.
Because of its enduring presence over time and across cultures, arriving at a broadly accepted definition of play is a challenge. It may be that play is so diverse and dynamic that no one definition can capture its true nature (Brown, 2009). For the purposes of discussion, we will employ the definition offered by Joan Brooks McLane (2003): “. . . freely chosen, engaging, pleasurable activities, which may or may not include elements of pretend” (p. 2). In addition, the term unstructured play will be used to represent play that is child-directed without demands from others.